Many structural modules utilized in displays, especially in flat panel displays or touch panels, employ one or more sheets of glass for various purposes. A glass sheet can e.g. protect the pixel matrix which forms the image, or it can provide mechanical support for other functional layers e.g. in a display or in a touch panel. Simultaneously glass, as a material, provides for excellent optical properties, such as low absorption for visible light, which is mandatory for high quality displays and for touch panels on these displays.
When a layer of glass resides in between the viewer and the layer forming the image of a display, the layer of glass should be optically as uniform as possible so that the quality of the image is not compromised by the covering glass. To minimize optical flaws in one layer of glass it is common that only one structurally and optically homogeneous sheet of glass is employed for one layer of glass and no separate glass sheets are bonded together to form the layer. Therefore the size of such homogeneous glass sheets corresponds naturally to the size of the panel and the size of the sheet can vary from a couple of inches to even above 100 inches in diameter.
For improving the quality of the image and for reducing the weight of the panel, a glass sheet placed in front of the layer forming the image in a display is commonly very thin. As a result the glass sheets employed in panels suitable for displays may be mechanically weak and have a low threshold for rupture. For high quality and low weight displays it is therefore important to be able to fabricate structural modules incorporating a glass sheet, such that the threshold of fracture, or other parameters corresponding to strength, of the glass sheet upon environmental disturbances is increased in the module.
The prior art describes different structural modules for displays which incorporate glass substrates, commonly thin sheets of glass. Some of these modules attempt to e.g. improve the mechanical robustness and other mechanical properties of the structure by specific designs. For example patent application publication US2001/0050372 discloses a flexible substrate comprising a glass sheet having a layer of synthetic resin material in its surface.
With the ever increasing size of displays, now more than ever there exists a strong need for structural modules incorporating glass substrates with higher strength and mechanical robustness for displays.